


maybe you're my love

by galmaegi



Category: VIXX
Genre: Con Artists, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-21 07:17:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11939076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galmaegi/pseuds/galmaegi
Summary: Taekwoon is a novelist who frequents the coffee shop Jaehwan works at. Jaehwan sees an opportunity to use Taekwoon for his money—which would be fine, if Taekwoon didn't have a kind-of-not-really thing for Jaehwan, and if Jaehwan's own feelings hadn't somehow got involved.





	maybe you're my love

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [kiss kiss fall in love](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8758516) by [enriant (enpleurs)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enpleurs/pseuds/enriant). 



> Thank you to enpleurs for letting me play around with your works! Your worldbuilding leaves so much room for possibility. Sadly this is all I could do with it.

It was late afternoon, and a quiet had settled over the Peach Blossom Café, punctuated suddenly by the slam of a laptop lid from one of the two customers sitting in the place. Jaehwan looked up in alarm from behind the counter to see Jung Taekwoon, the romance novelist, looking right back at him. As soon as he caught Jaehwan's gaze, Taekwoon's eyes darted away. Jaehwan smirked. _Coy._

At the first opportunity, he wandered over to Taekwoon's table, coffee pot in hand. "Refill?" he asked, though he already knew Taekwoon's answer would be yes. The novelist had been coming in for weeks now, pecking away at his next best-seller, and Jaehwan had gotten to know all his habits: the way he ordered his first coffee; the number of hours that passed before he got hungry; and the various unhappy faces he'd make while working, some attractive and some really not attractive.

"One day," he began, "you're--"

The bell over the door jingled, and out of habit Jaehwan turned to greet the person who entered. The girl who walked in had also been coming in over the last few weeks, and though there was clearly nervousness written on her face, she marched with a sense of purpose straight to where Jaehwan was standing over Taekwoon.

Before Jaehwan even had time to think, she blurted out, "I was wondering if I could give you my number." Her face turned bright, bright red behind her round-framed glasses. "Or... Or if I could have yours..."

Jaehwan glanced to Taekwoon. He was silent, his default mode around people he didn't know, but his posture had an air of curiosity at what was happening that reminded Jaehwan of a cat's. His coffee cup sat empty on the table, no longer important. Was Taekwoon staring at her, or at him?

"Unless you're..." Her voice cut into Jaehwan's thoughts, and he startled a bit, but didn't look away from Taekwoon.

"I'm?" he asked.

Her voice became small and hesitant. "Seeing someone?"

Jaehwan took that as a cue. "Yes," he yelped, "I'm taken! We're dating," he added, pointing at Taekwoon for emphasis.

It was about as subtle as he'd accused Taekwoon of being earlier, but it did the job. The girl began to back off, stammering. Taekwoon still didn't say anything, but Jaehwan could tell it was now the silence of someone too shocked to respond, and he almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

Afterward, Jaehwan met the girl behind the cafe and handed her 50,000 won. "Where do you find these guys, Ning-Ning?" she chuckled as she inspected the money. "I thought the last one was weird, but this one..." She raised her eyebrows. "Does he even speak Korean? Is he foreign? Or mute?"

Jaehwan scoffed. "He's just shy. Easy to boss around. You know the type. Soon there'll be more where that came from." He nodded at the bills as Heeyeon stuffed them into her purse, along with the glasses she didn't need to wear. "Trust me, I know what I'm doing."

"Yeah, I've seen you in action." Heeyeon snorted. "Good luck with this one," she said, and she shook out her bobbed hair as she walked away.

♡ ♡ ♡

Jaehwan liked nice things. He liked branded clothes, new shoes, good cuts of meat, touchscreens. It wasn't that he'd been spoiled growing up with too much of these things; if anything, his pursuit of them now was to make up for lost time. It wasn't that he was a snob, either. A Lotteria cheeseburger was one of his favourite foods in the world. But it tasted so much better when someone else paid for it.

It wasn't that hard to get other people to pay for your nice things, but there were certain basic requirements. You needed to be cute, you needed leverage, and you needed to be able to go cold at any time. Jaehwan had tried with older women, but there was too much potential for scandal in those kind of relationships, and too much of a mess when the time came to go cold. But the kind of man who would want to pay for someone like him was also the kind of man who wouldn't want anyone else to know.

His friends would make all sorts of rude comments about his older brother complex, but the men were just an enjoyable means to what Jaehwan was really after: not only things, but wins. What Jaehwan liked most of all was winning.

But sometimes it didn't sit right with him, even when he won, and so six months ago he'd made an effort to stop. He'd always said he could quit at any time, anyway. He'd gone through a few part-time jobs since then, and barista seemed to suit him well. Right now he was working at the Peach Blossom often enough to pay for his own cheeseburgers.

When he'd first seen Jung Taekwoon in the café, his only impression had been that he looked scary and drank an alarming amount of coffee in a single afternoon. It was only natural curiosity that had made him look Taekwoon up, after he'd come in four times in a single week. Jaehwan really wanted to quit — wanted to prove that he could quit — but here was a successful writer in his presence almost every day, one who couldn't stop staring at Jaehwan and looking away when Jaehwan stared back. It seemed like Taekwoon had been having trouble with his newest work, anyway, so Jaehwan figured he could probably use a new source of inspiration. He was doing Taekwoon a favour, really. It could be a win for both of them.

♡ ♡ ♡

Jaehwan had thought his strategy with Heeyeon playing the shy, lovesick girl would appeal to a romance novelist's sensibilities, but a week had passed and so far Taekwoon seemed nothing but embarrassed by the whole situation. He wasn't too embarrassed to keep using the Peach Blossom Café as a part-time office — Jaehwan thanked his own magnetic charm for that — but he didn't come any more frequently than he used to, and whenever Jaehwan spoke to him a little too sweetly he'd grimace and duck his head down over his laptop, so that all Jaehwan ever saw these days was the crown of his head.

Just when Jaehwan was thinking of how to ask Heeyeon for a refund, his friend Junghwan came into the café. "Hey, Lee Jaehwan," he yelled as soon as he entered, louder than the chime of the bell over the door. "Heard you're up to your old—"

"Junghwan!" Jaehwan shouted back, hoping to drown out the sound of Junghwan blowing his cover. "What are you doing here?" He grinned with his teeth, but darted his eyeballs in Taekwoon's direction, hoping Junghwan would get the idea.

Junghwan got the idea, but refused to play along. "I heard you're dating again," he said, only a small revision from what he'd been about to say. He shook his head, tutting. "That poor short-haired girl."

"Did she tell you?" Jaehwan stammered.

Junghwan scoffed and made a vague gesture with his hand that meant, Of course she did. Louder, he continued, "It was, uh, someone from Channie's brother's college. Overheard her in class or something. She's in college, right?"

Jaehwan was already mentally re-drafting his demand for a refund from Heeyeon. "Boy, she really can't stop talking about it, can she!"

"So, do I get to meet him?" Junghwan turned in Taekwoon's direction, craning his neck. Taekwoon, meanwhile, had graduated from ducking his head down to fully sliding underneath the table with his head in his hands, so far down that his feet stuck out from the other side. It wasn't too late for Jaehwan to admit it was all just a joke; but then Junghwan might feel equally emboldened to tell the truth, and from everything he knew about Taekwoon, Jaehwan had a feeling that wouldn't go over well.

"He's a busy man," he said. "Too busy for gawkers like you. What do you think this is, a zoo?"

Junghwan snickered. "Looks like you still got it."

In response, Jaehwan made a gesture at him that thankfully Taekwoon couldn't see. Then he turned to Taekwoon. "Honey?" he asked, in a voice an octave higher than normal. "Come out, please."

Junghwan made a gagging motion and Jaehwan gave him another rude gesture just before Taekwoon emerged from beneath the table, hands over his face. Seeing him like this gave Jaehwan a small twinge of guilt in his chest—not the first one he'd ever experienced, but the first one in a while. He didn't want to believe there was a kind of man he couldn't win over, but he wasn't sure how much he wanted to push Taekwoon, even if the faces Taekwoon made when being pushed were kind of hot.

Junghwan sized Taekwoon up. "Wow," he said, "you look even taller than Jaehwan." He waggled his eyebrows at Jaehwan and grinned. Jaehwan opened his mouth, prepared to fend off whatever lewd joke his friend might crack next. But instead Junghwan said, "Chansik and I are going to the amusement park this weekend. How about you join us on a double date? I know you're not open on Saturday anyway."

So he had come to help after all. Jaehwan exchanged a look with Taekwoon. Taekwoon had removed his hands from his face, but he only returned the look, shocked into silence as he had been during the incident with Heeyeon. At that moment, Jaehwan had an idea: if he kept being outrageous, Taekwoon would be too stunned to do anything but passively go along with it. Maybe he had picked the right target after all.

It was a horrible, horrible thing he was doing. Jaehwan turned back to Junghwan and said yes.

♡ ♡ ♡

"I'm kind of surprised," Junghwan said.

"By what?" Jaehwan asked.

They were at the amusement park in line for the roller coaster, with Jaehwan and his friend Junghwan at the front, Junghwan's boyfriend Chansik glued to his side, and Taekwoon standing slightly behind the triangle the three of them made. The arrangement was less like a double date and more like three high schoolers and their extremely reluctant chaperone in ripped jeans. Junghwan snuck what he probably thought was a discreet glance behind them and said, "You know what."

"I didn't think that was your type," Chansik clarified, still keeping his chin on Junghwan's shoulder. "Strong and silent."

"I have all kinds of types!" Jaehwan protested. "Strong and silent, short and cute..." He leered at Junghwan. Junghwan ignored him, but Chansik frowned and tugged his boyfriend's arm even closer, if that was possible. Chansik had nothing to worry about where Jaehwan and Junghwan were concerned, but Jaehwan loved to tease him. It was fun, and if someone as young and cute as Chansik still felt threatened by him, it meant he was doing well.

Chansik was so possessive of Junghwan that Jaehwan low-key suspected that he liked to play the same game that Jaehwan did. But the look that Junghwan gave him when Jaehwan first suggested it was enough to make Jaehwan keep that suspicion to himself forever. Besides, Chansik had a game of his own, in underground e-sports betting.

Junghwan was always there to keep Jaehwan on the right track, and right now he hit Jaehwan in the side. _Talk to him,_ he mouthed, indicating Taekwoon, and as the line moved he and Chansik pulled ahead of Jaehwan so that Jaehwan got closer to Taekwoon.

As much as Jaehwan hated to ever admit it, he needed the help. He'd had to resort to pretending he'd lost his wallet in order to get Taekwoon to pay for his snacks, and even then he had to actually borrow money from Junghwan whenever Taekwoon ignored him and only bought food for himself. Jaehwan had laughed it off, but inside, he was getting pissed off. What had happened to the limp-noodle writer from the café who was too petrified to go against whatever Jaehwan suggested? Did he want inspiration for his novel or not?

"Are you scared?" he asked Taekwoon, as the line moved forward.

"No," Taekwoon said. "I like it." Then, after a long pause, he asked, "Are you scared?"

It was the first thing he'd said that wasn't just a response to someone else's question. Jaehwan pounced. "What if I said yes?" he asked. "Can I hold your hand?"

Too far. Taekwoon's mouth sealed shut again, and he stared into the distance. Needless to say, none of Jaehwan's attempts to hold his hand were successful—though that was in part because the roller coaster was terrifying, and he had to temporarily abandon his plan in order to preserve his own life.

"Maybe he doesn't like men," Junghwan said.

"Maybe he just doesn't like _you,"_ Chansik added.

Jaehwan scoffed. "He has a pulse, doesn't he?"

Junghwan opened his mouth, then paused. "I don't know, he might not."

Their final stop of the day was the ferris wheel. This was it—if this didn't make Taekwoon fall for him, then he'd have to move on. Jaehwan didn't want to move on. Moving on was losing. Taekwoon seemed to know his intention right away, but he didn't say anything when Jaehwan pulled him into the ferris wheel line, just made his usual alarmed, helpless expression.

The ferris wheel began its slow rotation upward, and a gentle pop ballad played inside their carriage. Finally, they were alone. "I was scared of these when I was little," Jaehwan said. "They went up so high."

"That's the point," Taekwoon replied, not looking away from the window. Jaehwan huffed. It was true that it didn't have to be Taekwoon; there had been men before him and there would be men after him. But Jaehwan felt compelled to impress him, specifically, in this moment. The idea that Taekwoon could resist him only made him want to prove that he couldn't.

Suddenly the carriage lurched as the ride let on another passenger, and he yelped and grabbed onto the railing. As his heart rate recovered, he heard Taekwoon snort. "Are you still scared?"

It was the same question as before, probing for a weakness. Jaehwan almost swore at him, but then he had an idea. "Of course not," he said, and he shifted his butt down the bench until he was right beside Taekwoon. He was careful to keep a bit of space between them so that they weren't actually touching. Taekwoon started fidgeting, and instantly Jaehwan felt more confident. He knew Taekwoon was feeling every millimetre of the space on the bench between his left thigh and Jaehwan's right.

"Go sit over there," Taekwoon said. "It's dangerous."

"People sit next to each other all the time," Jaehwan replied. "Like couples."

"We're not a couple," Taekwoon said, and it hung in the air.

The carriage jerked again, but this time it stopped completely, rocking slightly back and forth in the wind. "Oh, we're at the top!" Jaehwan exclaimed, as he looked out the window.

"Yes," Taekwoon replied. "We are."

Jaehwan laughed. "It's where we're supposed to kiss," he said. He pursed his lips and leaned slightly toward Taekwoon. It was a joke, meant to liven things up again. Taekwoon was supposed to move away, and Jaehwan would laugh while continuing to seethe inside and the ferris wheel would start up again, bringing them back down.

That was not what happened. Instead, Taekwoon moved forward, and brushed his lips to Jaehwan's. His lips felt smooth like a pour of coffee cream, Jaehwan's stomach dipped, but not from the ferris wheel. He was the one who moved away first.

"I slipped," Taekwoon said. He sounded sheepish, but he had a smile at the corners of his mouth.

Jaehwan blinked rapidly, trying to bring his eyes back into focus, trying to smile back. This wasn't what he expected, but it was what he wanted. But what he didn't want was his heartbeat moving up into his throat, or the overwhelming feeling of wanting to curl into Taekwoon's arms and stay there for a long time. His plan didn't involve being around for a long time.

Junghwan and Chansik met them at the bottom. As they walked toward the park exit, Junghwan elbowed Jaehwan. "Well?"

To pull off this sort of thing, there were basic requirements: you needed to be cute, you needed leverage, and you needed to be able to go cold at any time. Jaehwan had done this before so many times, and there was no good reason that he couldn't do it now.

"I've got it," he said, not looking at Junghwan or at Taekwoon's broad back ahead of him. "Everything according to plan." If Junghwan wasn't convinced, he at least didn't say it.

♡ ♡ ♡

Almost overnight, Taekwoon had changed. Suddenly he was the one who was full of energy and affection, and Jaehwan was the one always being taken by surprise. Taekwoon would show up at the café, and after Jaehwan's shift he would be pulled along to wherever Taekwoon wanted to go, Taekwoon's arm strong around his shoulder as they walked through Hongdae or Itaewon together. Usually the trick was pretending the other person was in control, but Jaehwan had nothing to pretend.

Things were going according to plan: Taekwoon paid for everything without Jaehwan having to do much in return. But even though it was working, it was still different than he was used to. For one, he hadn't been prepared for the feeling of doubt that hung heavy in his chest every time he spent time with Taekwoon. _Writers don't make that much money,_ his friend Seokjin sneered at him over text from wherever he was currently, Hawaii or maybe Las Vegas. _Can't you do better?_ But the doubt Jaehwan felt wasn't that he'd picked the wrong target, not exactly.

Once he almost got caught. Taekwoon had been talking to him during dinner about the latest scene in his novel when he suddenly stopped. "Is everything okay?"

"Huh?" Jaehwan sat up, and realized he'd been sitting there without eating for a few minutes. He picked up his utensils and started putting more food on his plate. "I'm fine."

"You know you can talk to me about anything," Taekwoon said.

Something about his sweet tone made Jaehwan angry. He laughed so that they could move on before he said something he regretted. "Anything, huh?" he said flirtatiously, bumping his knee to Taekwoon's under the table. That made Taekwoon blush and bite his lip, and he turned his attention back to cooking the meat on the table and away from whatever he thought might be bothering Jaehwan.

What Jaehwan had been thinking about was the day when he'd have to go cold and get rid of Taekwoon. Even if he couldn't do it emotionally—and this had never been a problem for him before—he could threaten to send pictures of them to his publisher, or to the press, try to squeeze one last payment out before the end. The thought made him feel bad, and the bad feeling was the whole reason he'd wanted to quit to begin with. But he'd wanted to get close to Taekwoon, and this had been the only way he could think of. Now it was the only way that was left.

♡ ♡ ♡

Technically, it wasn't Taekwoon who broke up with him; it was Cha Hakyeon, his editor and roommate, who Jaehwan had met only once, quickly, at the door of Taekwoon's apartment. He came with Taekwoon to the Peach Blossom Café and strode up to the counter where Jaehwan was standing, the jangling of the bell over the door as dramatic as his walk. Taekwoon wasn't looking up from his shoes. Right away, Jaehwan had a bad feeling about what was about to happen.

"Welcome to Peach Blossom," he said.

"You are not allowed to see Taekwoon," Hakyeon replied. "Never again."

Jaehwan kept his gaze fixed on Hakyeon, not willing to look at Taekwoon like this. "Is that what he wants or what you want?" He was trying to stay calm, to stand up against Hakyeon like he knew he could, but he could feel the muscles behind his eyes shaking.

But then Taekwoon mumbled, "It's what I want," and Jaehwan's blood ran cold.

"You couldn't fucking wait until after my shift?" he said. There were a few other patrons there, and both he and Hakyeon had the kind of voices that carried. "You couldn't talk to me first? And who asked you to—"

"There's nothing to talk about," Hakyeon said. "Unless you want to talk about this."

He held up his phone. On it was a picture of Jaehwan a few years ago, a selca taken with a man with swept-back hair and glasses. Jaehwan snatched at the phone, but Hakyeon held it out of his reach. "Where did you get that?"

Taekwoon bit his lip. "Private investigator," he said.

"Story sounded a little too good to be true," Hakyeon added. "I had to check."

Jaehwan gaped at both of them. "You hired a fucking—"

"Doesn't feel good, does it?" Hakyeon said. "Being blackmailed like this, by someone you thought you knew."

Jaehwan wanted to tell him that he was wrong, but he wasn't. None of his targets had really gotten to know him, and he hadn't bothered to get to know them, either. With some of them he could hardly remember their faces, or what he had gotten from them. But Hakyeon was wrong, because Jaehwan didn't even think about that with Taekwoon. When he thought about Taekwoon, he thought about an arm around his shoulder, a gentle kiss in a ferris wheel overlooking the river.

"This wasn't like that," he said. "Please." Finally, Taekwoon looked up.

"Well," he said, "we were never a real couple to begin with." And he wasn't wrong, either.

♡ ♡ ♡

It was late afternoon when Jaehwan arrived at the bookstore in central Seoul. He wandered around the store for a while, and eventually he picked up a copy of Jung Taekwoon's latest novel, _Words to Say._ The book was about a private detective who falls in love with the con woman he's investigating, and it was already being praised as a fresh direction for a romance novel. Taekwoon's picture gazed at him from a display on the table where the books were set up, with a neutral, cat-eyed expression so familiar that it made Jaehwan's heart speed up.

"Oh, you can just go to the back, sir," the cashier told him when he went to pay for the book. "Mr. Jung Taekwoon is giving his reading right now. You're in luck."

Jaehwan gave her a weak smile. "Yeah, lucky me."

It was the first time he'd seen Taekwoon in months. Hakyeon was there too, sitting behind the table looking at his phone. On the subway Jaehwan had fantasized about making a loud, grand entrance, but now all he did was silently slip into the line-up of fans waiting to speak with Taekwoon, pulling the bucket hat he was wearing lower over his eyes.

But the hat wouldn't work for long, and eventually he came face-to-face with Taekwoon. "Hi," he said, and his voice sounded too high and phlegmy in his throat.

Hakyeon's head swivelled up sharply, but Taekwoon put out a hand before he could stand up. "Who should I sign this for?" he asked calmly, cracking open the front cover of the book.

"You owe me money," Jaehwan blurted out. Taekwoon paused mid-sign and raised his eyebrows. "For inspiring your story. I mean, it's super obvious."

"I don't owe you," Taekwoon replied, "we're even now."

"You're holding up the line, sir," Hakyeon intoned from behind Taekwoon. Jaehwan made a face at him.

Taekwoon's head bowed over the book as he wrote something down, then he closed the cover and handed the book back to Jaehwan. "Thanks for coming today," he said.

"You should be thanking me for more than that," Jaehwan said, but his face burned from embarrassment. He took his book and walked away, not looking back.

He made it to just outside the bookstore before his curiosity outstripped his patience. He opened up the book's front cover and read:

_To Jaehwan.  
Let's meet again. But this time, you're paying._


End file.
